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Friday, February 26, 2016

Sprint Report - Hacking and Base Economy

Hey all!

This weekend marks the end of this month's sprint which has been quite successful in my opinion. The focus of the month was gameplay, focusing on two of the main pillars of the game. Hacking gameplay was one, trying to clarify and make interesting opportunities for the player to leverage during combat. Two, was starting to build the foundation of the base management and player upgrades.

Flash Shield - Augmentation to the dodge ability, gives the player a temporary damage reduction for a moment or two. Will most likely be split into two different effects, a small reduction while dodging, a larger reduction if used standing still.

Performance Diagnostics - Figured out some of the larger taxation on performance and either removed or improved.

Hacking Feedback - Better visual player feedback for hacking with color state changes in all hack-able items.

Settings and Adjustments - Implemented a simple settings menu bought from the marketplace that allows for adjustment of video and audio settings. Currently the only fully working options are the video resolution options and the various audio sliders, but more gameplay options and other settings will be implemented as the project progresses.

Menu and Framework - Dynamic menu framework created and implemented for most menus. Allows for better menu functionality and much more easy to maintain on the back end.

Munitions Overload - Explosive "barrels" now will trigger a timed detonation after taking a certain amount of damage, or after the player has hacked them to cause the overload.

Turret Charming - Reworked turrets to accept multiple target types instead of being hard-coded to the player. Hacking turrets now makes them fire on the enemy as expected rather than the previous temporary version of simply blowing up.

Blueprint Cleanup - Maintenance and cleanup of blueprints to make them easier to work with and accessible should the project ever have more of a team than just myself.

A quick note on the management economy, I really didn't want a complex system at all, only to afford the player opportunity for some engaging and meaningful decisions. As an extension of that, I'm hoping that it will also give a ground for the NPC's to "play" in, adding life and variety to themselves and the base.

Running the base, you have three main concerns:

Energy - To run the machines

Food - To feed the dwellers working in the base

Defense - To protect your base and its denizens from outside forces

Everyday, any dwellers assigned will produce a certain amount of their associated good. Any costs will be subtracted, dwellers working to produce energy will need food, and vice versa for food producers. Excess will be converted into a smaller amount of the shelf stable version, food to supplies, energy to fuel. That way any day that doesn't have enough produce to meet its demands can use the base's stores but is an incentive to plan ahead as it isn't as efficient. Defense simply produces the primary value used to decide what happens in an external event, enemy or otherwise. Fuel and Supply are the primary ingredients in trade and upgrades so the player needs to balance their needs against that of the base.

For the broader economy, fictionally speaking there is no money to speak of on this planet that is meaningful to the main populace, so the only currency is influence. The more goods and services you provide to the local populace, the more they trust and are willing to work with you. With some influence you can ask for help in the form of dwellers, intelligence, other goods, and they will happily provide you with it to a point before your influence degrades. This may be a money with a direct 1 to 1 transaction, or a more organic threshold, I'm not sure yet.

I hope the above breakdown of the economy makes sense and is interesting, I put a lot of thought into it and hope that it will support a lot of nuanced player choice and expression while avoiding unnecessary complexity. Any thoughts or comments are of course welcome!

Over the next few days I will be blocking out work for the upcoming month's sprint. I have a working list of ideas but I think the focus will simply be fleshing out more content in the game, using the systems and gameplay that is already implemented and really putting it to work. Off the top of my head, the highest priority there will be the main wilderness map, trying to push each encounter so they are as engaging as possible. Secondary to that would probably be a working layout of the shoreline map, seeing if the gameplay transitions well to a completely different biome and if there any opportunities to vary the gameplay even more on an environment scale. This could be thick fog that sometimes obscure the enemy, poison water, subterranean enemies that pop out of the sand, who knows!

Thanks very much for your time, if you haven't already tried downloading last week's build please do so and leave me some feedback, and have a great weekend! - CJ